Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup
A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
Never in my wildest youthful dreams did I ever think I’d have to worry about dry skin, but now I do. Like, daily. Sometimes, hourly it seems. In fact, I think I’ll put on some moisturizer right now. BRB! 🙂
Here are some things that have been helping me deal with my dry winter skin.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
As a participant in the Nuvesse Tired Eyes, Puffiness & Dark Circles One-Month Regimen Test, I received product samples and compensation for my time and effort. Although this post is sponsored, all opinions are always my own. nuvesse.com #sponsored
My parents have a picture of me from my college graduation day in their living room, and in that picture I look completely refreshed and awake.
And I don’t even know how! — because I’m not wearing any concealer in that picture, and my friend Eleanor and I were out all night long at a party the night before.
I think I got a total of 90 minutes of sleep before I had to get up, take a shower, get to the stadium and take pictures before the ceremony.
Ah, those were the days…
It’s not like that anymore, of course. Now, if I get anything less than 10 hours of sleep a night and don’t drink gallons of water throughout the day interspersed with green juices, fiber-full salads and lots of yoga, I have dark circles.
So it’s basically a 24/7 kind of thing.
In an effort to quell/stanch/erase/improve my dark circle sitch, I started a one-month dark circles regimen from a skin care company called Nuvesse. Right now I’m halfway through the one-month regimen, which involves applying a weekly mask and using a daily serum roller.
What is Nuvesse?
“Nuvesse Skin Therapies, Inc. was founded in 2004 and developed a propriety wound-healing technology, HealSmart Personalized Woundcare System (HealSmart™). The company realized that the application of its newest active delivery technology, Cellulation™ Technology, to skin care had the potential to yield superior benefits and reach and launched its first skin therapy portfolio of products in mid-2014 into the aesthetic medical channel. After further refinement the company just launched its new consumer brand, Nuvesse.”
— Nuvesse
Nuvesse has products for consumers for deep hydrating and brightening, eye-firming, anti-aging, eye puffiness and dark circles. They’re all available in serum-infused bio-cellulose masks and serum rollers, which you can use separately or together as part of a regimen, which is what I’m doing right now with the one-month Tired Eyes, Puffiness & Dark Circles Regimen Kit.
The one-month dark circles regimen is for reducing dark circles (obvs), puffiness and fine lines in the under-eye area, all of which are things I really want to happen (!). It comes with four weekly serum-infused masks and a twice-daily serum roller with Nuvesse Celluation™ Technology, which has been proven to deliver the ingredients deep into the skin to make the serums more effective.
Ingredients
Water, Isopropyl Alcohol, Sodium Hyaluronate, Ascorbyl Palmitate, Camellia Oleifera (Camellia) Seed Oil, Hesperidin, Retinyl Palmitate, Niacinamide, Tocopheryl Acetate, Glycerin, Caffeine, Aloe Barbadensis (Aloe) Leaf Juice, Acetyl Hexapeptide-8, Kjellmaniella Crassifolia Extract, Copper Tripeptide-1, Hydrolyzed Sesame Protein, Lavandula Angustifolia
Yay! All Nighter is my favorite Urban Decay setting spray, and it got a new outfit.
FOR YEARS, I’ve been not-so-silently ranting about the white bottle because it gets so dirty so easily.
FINALLY! It has a practical outfit.
UD’s All Nighter, Chill and De-Slick settings sprays all get new packaging in the Urban Decay Spring 2017 Collection, which is all about skin.
For their spring collection, which is coming out soon, UD didn’t focus on makeup this time. They focused on skin. Along with the repackaged setting sprays, which are $31 each, they also gave their B6 prep spray a new outfit (also $31) and added some new skin perfecting items, namely a $31 prep spray called Quick Fix ($31) and five new $34 Complexion Primers.
You can use any of these sprays and products separately, of course, and I’ve used many of them before, but UD’s idea is to use some of them in tandem, like in a makeup prepping, priming, setting cocktail.
First, you prep your skin for makeup with either B6 or the Quick Fix spray (which are the sprays in the neon green bottles, then prime your skin with one of the five Complexion Primers (or, sometimes I’ll target different areas of my skin with different primers), and then set your makeup with one of the three setting sprays when you’re done.
Creams. I’ve been wearing a ton of creams lately — cream foundation, cream blush, cream highlighter. More than usual. Basically, with this colder weather and the heater cranking, my skin has been extra dry. It gets painful, so I’ve been wearing more products with an emollient base.
And it doesn’t even get really, really cold here like it does back east! I can’t even imagine how painful your skin must get sometimes if you live somewhere that gets below zero.
Creams definitely help me, and they last longer on my skin now than they do in summer. Heck, on really hot days in July, I’ll barely make it out the front door before I’ve already sweated (sweat?) away any cream products, but when it’s colder like now and my skin is drier than usual, it craves cream products and holds onto them better.
Hourglass Vanish Seamless Finish Foundation is one I’ve been wearing a lot. Another one is Kjær Weis Cream Foundation, which is GREAT. It’s one of those that doesn’t look like you’re wearing anything, but it has pretty good coverage (I also like their Cream Blush).
Also, creamy, peachy pearl MAC Cream Colour Base in Hush has been my go-to highlighter as of late.
I notice that I haven’t been using as many powder products lately for my face. I mean, I’ll still set my cream foundation with a little bit of powder (MAC Mineralize Skinfinish is a favorite), but I’ll just the smallest amount.
When my skin gets really dry like this in winter and I use too much powder, the particles settle into my pores and fine lines, and I swear…it ages me. I look older. And as I get into my 40s — and we are gettin’ in there! — the less I wear, the younger I look.
How about you? What makeup products are you using more (or less) now that the weather’s colder?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Do you have a second? — because if you do, get into my Mazda, girl! Let’s go to Sephora! You need to check out these Hourglass Vanish Seamless Finish Foundation Sticks. They’re my favorite foundation at the moment. Period. The coverage is flexible, and that’s perfect for my current mission in life, which is to have my makeup look as natural as possible.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I wish I could take a spin back to 1999 in Doc Brown’s DeLorean because my late-1990s self would have lost her/my sh*t over this personalized Body Shop Body Butter.
OMG! It’s a Christmas panda!!!
I remember back in the late ‘90s/early aughts, The Body Shop was HUGE, right? All of my friends and I were totally into them. I wore their Shimmer Cube eyeshadow constantly for a while, and I had this, like — I talk about it all the time — Mary J. Blidge-inspired lip combo with a Body Shop dark purple lip liner that I wore with a frosty silver lipstick.
Grapefruit Body was was my jam for two solid years, and do you remember their Avocado Body Butter? I used that one for a long time.
And then there was the Olive one, which was also lovely. It had a light, fresh, grassy scent that was totally unusual at the time.
Do you happen to remember White Musk?? At one point in time, I swear, every early 20-something woman on Muni in SF was wearing that perfume. Some mornings I’d step onto the train into a fog of Body Shop White Musk…
If you live in or near New York City, lucky you, because that’s where you can get your own personalized Body Butter. Some of the stores in the New York area are offering it as a service (here’s a list of them) when you buy one of the regular $21 jars or the $36 super-sized ones, and it doesn’t cost anything extra. They make the label in the store, and you can pick it up the same day.
I wish they did this at the rest of their stores (hint-hint!). I asked a Body Shop rep if the stores in New York could ship them out, but no luck there either. This year at least, it’s a local thing.
Do you have any Body Shop faves (now or back in the day)? Let me know in the comments. I’m curious.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Every day for the past few weeks I’ve been experiencing magic — magic! — in my shower.
Actually…at the end of my shower, because of this bottle of Curel Hydra Therapy Wet Skin Moisturizer ($10.44 for a 12-oz. bottle).
It looks like your run-of-the-mill moisturizer, but it’s actually nothing like that at all. And that’s because — dun-dun-duuun! — you don’t have to rub it in.
Like, seriously, I don’t even want to know how long I’ve spent standing in my bathroom massaging lotion into my skin. I probably could have read War and Peace five times in the time I’ve spent rubbing lotion into my limbs.
Curel Hydra Therapy is fascinating! All you have to do is put it on wet skin — literally just rub it on really quickly once or twice — dry off with a towel, and you’re done. You don’t have to massage it into your skin. And shockingly, it works really, really well. With my dry skin, I need a heavy-duty moisturizing lotion, and this stuff delivers the goods.
It’s unscented, but more importantly for me, it doesn’t feel greasy like the thick, heavy lotions I sometimes use that leave behind a yucky film, or that leave the backs of my knees and elbows sticky.
I’ve been having many hallelujah moments with this. You should have them too. 🙂
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I just rubbed a whole glob of Soap & Glory’s Diamond Edition Righteous Butter lotion on my limbs, and now there’s so much silver glitter on me that I look ready to rave circa 1995.
Just add glow sticks and platforms.
The Diamond Edition is more or less like the regular Righteous Butter, except with lots of silver glitter. It has the same sweet white floral fragrance (reminds me of the old Dior Miss Cherie, which I loved), and it’s just as moisturizing, too.
But the glitter! Duuude, there’s a ton! I can’t decide whether it’s more cheesy or Victoria’s Secret runway…
Whatever, I’ll still rock it. 🙂
I can’t seem to find it anywhere online here in the U.S. yet, so I’m not sure when it’ll be widely available, but keep an eye out for that sparkly silver glitter if you’re a Righteous Butter fan.
PRICE: $15 for a huge 10.1-oz. jar.
AVAILABILITY: Coming soon to Soap & Glory counters
MAKEUP AND BEAUTY BLOG RATING: A
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen